Tamar (novel) - Characters - 1945

1945

• Dart (Dr. Ernest Lubbers/William Hyde), a Dutch resistance fighter in the SOE (the Special Operations Executive), trained in London. He is Tamar’s wireless operator in Holland after they are deployed. He falls in love with the character Marijke to the point of obsession. Later in the story, Tamar Hyde, his granddaughter, depicts him as “living in a world full of mirages and mazes, of mirrors and misleading signs. He fascinated by riddles and codes and conundrums and labyrinths, by the origin of place names, by grammar, by slang by jokes. ... by anything that might mean something else. He live in a world that was slippery, changeable, fluid.”
• Tamar (Christaan Boogart) is a Dutch Resistance fighter and an agent in the SOE (the Special Operations Executive) deployed in Holland with his partner Dart in 1944-45. Tamar is the leader and organizer of all the resistance groups in his area of Holland. He is Tamar Hyde’s biological grandfather, and is said to have "thick dark hair cut short at the sides and a rather long narrow . . . the kind of features that a romantic novelist might describe as ‘finely chiseled’"
• Marijke Maartens, a Dutch woman with "a fall of dark hair that almost to the narrow shoulders, framing pale oval face", is Tamar’s lover. In the novel, she lives on Sanctuary Farm near the town of Mendlo. Her parents died when she was young, so she lives with her grandmother, Oma. Later in the story, she is shown as developing dementia. She is Tamar Hyde's grandmother.
• Koop de Vries is a leader of one of the many Dutch Resistance groups in Holland that appear in the novel. He and four other characters lead a violent rebellion against the Nazis in the area, where Tamar acts as the leader of the resistance. Koop is very skeptical of Tamar’s ability to lead, so his group prefers to be alone and act independently. Koop is said to be "tall and hawkish, his face resembl a primitive weapon carved from bone."
• Trixie Greydanus is a fictional Dutch woman and Tamar and Dart's courier. She rides her bicycle to take messages back and forth for them with her infant daughter Rosa. In the novel, Trixie acts very determined and hard to sway. In her old age, Tamar's father Jan, describes her: “She had the same bright chestnut-colored eyes as Rosa. She was wearing a lot of careful makeup, and her hair was strange. Cut in a very old-fashioned style and dyed a dark blond colour.”
• SS Lieutenant General Hanns Albin Rauter is a Nazi general who is the "head of internal security for Holland." He "considers happiness to be a form of mental deficiency."